Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday January 04, 2008 @12:21AM
from the retrograde-innovation dept.

Channel Guy writes "According to a report from CRN, Microsoft plans to allow users of the Web Server SKU in Windows Server 2008 to 'run any type of database software with no limit on the number of users, provided they deploy it as an Internet-facing front-end server.' The previous limit was 50 users. Microsoft's partners expect the changes to go a long way toward making Windows Web Server 2008 more competitive with the LAMP stack, against which Microsoft has been making headway in recent months."

If you're a hosting service, or if you're serving up databases for multiple web clients, then it's quite possible that you might have dozens of different users. I don't know about you, but when I've got multiple databases on a server for different people, I don't tend to want to give everyone access to the entire show.

Let us assume a LAMP stack which comes via a support subscription (eg. RHEL). And lets assume variables such as customer support and pricing are equal, I would still go with the LAMP stack. I have experience with both, and I find LAMP to be easier to use yet much more versatile. A Microsoft web stack can definitely get the job done... but I find things easier to accomplish with LAMP -- I definitely don't work with Microsoft stacks without getting paid for it.

Not if you're using it with a Active Directory system with automatic login to an intranet ala Sharepoint...

I agree with your logic but MS doesn't do logic... they do licenses and IP... so all of their technology is set up on the premise that they need you to buy lots of licenses to do 'anything'...

though when you do cough up enough money, their integrated suites of software are pretty useful, as long as you need to do exactly what the software is capable of and nothing else.

As soon as you need to do something else, you'll either have to hire an extremely over-priced development firm, a team of developers and all the overhead of a new department - or wait until MS decides that enough of your peers want to buy the thing you need for it to be profitable to them.

This is silly though. Web services only need one "user" -- the user that connect to the database on behalf of the server.

That is not the way Microsoft defines a user. A Microsoft "user" is any person who uses the website. So if you have thousands of users, you have to pay for thousands of CALs, or take a server-license (one price no matter how many users).

And if or when they decide they've recaptured sufficient market share they will increase their fees...either through licensing of connections or functionality. I must confess that I find this pretty amusing. I think (and hope) they're going to have a tougher time killing off this competitor...

And if or when they decide they've recaptured sufficient market share they will increase their fees

I think (and hope) they're going to have a tougher time killing off this competitor...

I think you've alluded to the most interesting part of this story: Microsoft is being forced to lower their prices (or even eliminate them) in order to compete with free software. This isn't a new phenomenon, of course -- they haven't been able to charge for IIS or IE, for example, due to competition from free software -- but it seems that it is happening frequently.

If I had stock in MSFT, I would start selling it once they announce that they've made any significant reduction in the cost of MS Office; it's one of the biggest cash cows for the company, and any sign of weakness in that space is their worst nightmare.

The thing about free software is that it is nowhere near as vulnerable to market pressure as a traditional competitor. When the price of linux or firefox or openoffice is free the best MS can do is match it they can never undercut it and because the software is free to start with it is rather hard to cut off developments air supply through market pressure either.

Windows Server 2008 is the server version of Vista. Will it have the same licensing model? Will this unlimited Windows Web Server be available only in the Ultimate version?

That's not exactly a fair comparison. While Windows Server 2008 is the same codebase as Windows Vista, it's not "just" the server version of Vista. By that same rationale, Windows Server 2003 was "just" the server version of Windows XP. However Windows Server 2003 had different SKUs than XP with different licensing models, and you can

That's not exactly a fair comparison. While Windows Server 2008 is the same codebase as Windows Vista, it's not "just" the server version of Vista.

If its the same codebase and the only difference is that with one 'version' you get licenced to tie your shoelaces with your left hand and with the other one you get licenced to allow your mother to tie your shoelaces or on the gripping hand you can get another licence that costs 20x more which allows anybody in your family to do the same, then I say that you'

Many, many people seem to like misusing the term SKU. At least, I think they're misusing the term. After all, I wouldn't tell my wife "Wow, these new Doritos bar codes are mighty tasty! Pass me a bar code of that lemonade."

For what it's worth, I agree with you. On the other hand, that's what Microsoft uses to refer to the various versions of a product (they seem to alternate between "SKU" and "Edition" with no rhyme or reason why one word is used over the other), so that's what I used to refer to them. I

The base cost of Windows Web Server is in the area of $400. This is as good as zero for the people that host 90% or more of the active hosts out there. Only hobbyists and small-time outfits that run their own hosts would mind a measly $400. However, the bulk of small-time outfits with an on-line presence (most of the the 90%) use a hosting service. They buy some frontpage-template-cookie-cutter "e-commerce kit" and run with it. They do not control or administer the server and most probably don't even care that they might be hosting their site on a Microsoft system, or Linux or BSD for that matter.

There was notable uptake in MSFT market share with the original release of Web Edition--just after the last time MSFT flirted with 1/3 market share they started losing it rapidly again, and its release temporarily kept them in the 30% range before it dropped back down to the low 20s for a long time. Win2k3 Web Server was found to be well suited to "parking pages" and "basic hosting services" for big-time web hosting companies--for those sites that are static and have little to no e-commerce and content-management requirements.

MSFT ran into a wall however because Web Edition has a lot of sometimes-severe limitations. Notably there are restrictions on number of database users and other back-end and connectivity issues that required CALs or other VERY EXPENSIVE ($5000 and up) licensing. For example, you are limited to workgroup security only, with only 10 SMB connections (something like XP Home Edition's capabilities in terms of Windows networking) so if Windows Networking is used to maintain the files on a host of a large number of little sites you can hit a snag there. Web Edition also is not permitted to work with SharePoint services, or use Rights Management services either. So, it looks attractive to start with, but when you want to do anything more useful than host a bunch of "electronic brochures" or domain parking then MSFT wants to rape your wallet.

As for your query, despite the common codebase with Vista, the Server product line is not likely to bear any resemblance to the Vista product line. the Server OSes maintain the "model year" designation they've had since 2000. There will be no "basic/premium/business/ultimate"; it will merely evolve from the product line since 2000: standard/enterprise/datacentre/SBS/Web, with "File server" and "Medium business" targeted editions thrown in as new choices. The "File Server" edition will be a purpose-built, reduced-cost version targeted at Linux/BSD with Samba installs no doubt. Just as always, I expect the web server will be available on the same editions as in 2003, but will only be "unlimited" if you buy the cheap web edition or spend thousands on "external connector licenses" or CALs.

Actually, yes it was both when it started. Slashdot started as "Chips and Dips", Malda's personal website in 1997. Soon after he and a few buddies started writing a bit of Perl code to allow for discussion and moderation around the articles they posted. It was, in that brief early time exactly that: a small-time hobbyist outfit.

Of course now it is the mother of all sites and corporately owned. And in fact, Sourceforge Incorporated probably does indeed consider $400 to be chump change. The savings in licensing costs very long ago ceased to be relevant in the choice to use Linux and Apache for Slashdot. Consider these observations:

1) Slashdot STARTED as a "small time hobby outfit" which made the initial choice of Linux, Apache and Perl the only real choice when cost WAS a factor. Linux or FreeBSD were the only vialble and affordable OS options as well, at a time when expensive Solaris was closed-server-OS king.

2) Slashdot started in 1997. Back then MS Windows NT Server and IIS sucked worse than a $2 hooker. Apache was king and all the rest were expensive, or sucked or both. Linux and Apache could take a daily slashdotting on a couple of boxes whereas Windows NT would have to reboot daily and would require a full height rack packed with server gear to do the same.

3) if it aint broke don't fix it--there is a lot of time and effort put into the perl code and MySQL database that is used in slashcode. When they needed to handle the load they deployed it over mod_perl. To move to Windows would require a lot of work to completely rewrite the app, or else tons of frustration dealing with putting Apache and nod_perl onto Windows.

4) Politics. Slashdot is news for NERDS. Windows is pointy-haired-boss/MCSE-dweeb stuff. Linux and BSD and Apache and other Free software is "elite". Slashdot is also all about Free software as The Right Thing to Do. WHy would an advocate of open source put any effort into deploying its premiere site using closed tools, even if it were cheaper or had technical advantages? It'd be like Microsoft migrating servers to Linux.

Slashdot started in 1997. Back then MS Windows NT Server and IIS sucked worse than a $2 hooker. Apache was king and all the rest were expensive, or sucked or both. Linux and Apache could take a daily slashdotting...

So what you're saying is that slashdot was designed to withstand a slashdotting? Now that's forward thinking!

The base cost of Windows Web Server is in the area of $400. This is as good as zero for the people that host 90% or more of the active hosts out there. Only hobbyists and small-time outfits that run their own hosts would mind a measly $400.

It sounds believable until your company decides to scale. Licensing like this can limit growth, especially at the earlier stages when it really counts.

"Only hobbyists and small-time outfits that run their own hosts would mind a measly $400."That is just the tip of the Microsoft corporate licensing nightmare. At my government agency employer, we only use Linux for all our web servers. Why? Because we are developers and we want to drop a web/database/file/email/proxy/printer/whatever server wherever it is needed without being bogged down in a sea of Microsoft red tape.

GPL means one simple licence: use it on any machine you want, whenever you want. Absolute

Well, if you don't have any experience with *nix, that's true, but as a guy that has been using various flavors since about 1990, the above is just nasty flamebait. The really neat part is that I can go to my managers and say "Yeah, it will probably take a bit longer to get that Samba domain controller rolled out for accounting, but guess what, your licensing fees forever is $0.00."

"Yeah, it will probably take a bit longer to get that Samba domain controller rolled out for accounting, but guess what, your licensing fees forever is $0.00."

Let's say the license for that domain controller is $500. And you cost your employer the typical IT salary + benefits of $100,000 a year -- about $50 an hour. If it takes you more than ten hours to setup the Samba domain controller, it's a bad idea. As is if it takes more than ten hours extra to configure it, over the lifetime of the domain controller. (The Auditor's laptop takes an extra hour of your time to work with Samba? you need to spend a week to train your replacement when you leave?)

Let's say the license for that domain controller is $500. And you cost your employer the typical IT salary + benefits of $100,000 a year -- about $50 an hour. If it takes you more than ten hours to setup the Samba domain controller, it's a bad idea

Sorry, but I have to nitpick. The $500 domain controller will still need some time to configure. Maybe Samba starts being a waste of time at 55 hours?

I was wondering about this too. Most all of the windows domain instalations I see don't even have physical licenses, someone down the road just put the licenses in the server config and dropped it. I asked one guy I know who did this and he said Why pay for it if you don't have too, I then asked him why he paid for windows, he says he didn't the company did. Well, after seeing a logic loop starting I just shook my head and dropped it.On another note, I was helping a kid who went through a vocational school

Let's say the license for that domain controller is $500. And you cost your employer the typical IT salary + benefits of $100,000 a year -- about $50 an hour. If it takes you more than ten hours to setup the Samba domain controller, it's a bad idea.

I can do it in 30 minutes easily. Most of my past jobs had the same pay for a Windows administrator doing the same thing on Windows.

(The Auditor's laptop takes an extra hour of your time to work with Samba? you need to spend a week to train your replacement when

If you have a problem with Windows, it's not like Microsoft is going to hold your hand and fix it for you quickly. Most times I needed technical support for a commercial product, I realised I would fix the problems myself quicker and better, if I could do it (if I had the source).

If you have problems with bugs in Windows, you have to wait for Microsoft to fix it, if they decide to fix it.

With Windows you're more prone to more serious security problems. Of course there are vulnerabilities in Linux as well, but I've never seen something as wild as the chaos caused by ILOVEYOU [wikipedia.org] and NIMDA [wikipedia.org] in Linux.

With Windows you have to spend with server licenses, client licenses, extra CALs if your clients are not Windows. If that was not enough, you still have to pay for an antivirus. With LAMP you don't need any licenses. Not to mention that you have to manage all the licenses. And don't lose any media, it's not like you can easily download it from their site!

So, while Linux is not gratis, it's still much cheaper than Windows. Especially for Web systems such as LAMP, most distributions allow you to install it as easily as one command (or even a graphical installer), and you can even download a virtual machine [vmware.com] that you can use as a development or testing environment without even having to install anything.

If there is one thing that still can be cheaper in Windows, is that you can hire a Windows administrator for cheap, while a Linux administrator would probably require a higher pay. But this is changing with the popularization of Linux, there are more Linux admins in the market today. Another point is that you get what you pay for, the cheap Windows administrator probably won't do that good a job, and if you want quality you'll probably have to pay as much as you would pay to a good Linux administrator anyway.

You said it so incredibly well. The baseline costs are going to be about equal. But, you hit the wall so fast when trying to get anything done in a windows environment due to licensing restrictions and the excess time spent crawling through the interface to do the simplest task. Until you've seen someone drop a preconfigured kick-start system onto a rackload of servers and have the entire thing running in an hour you haven't seen the power of linux.

It isn't behind, and has never been. Using FAI "The nodes (106 servers) took about 10-12 minutes total when reinstalled on mass. Individually, a node takes about 4 minutes to go down and come back up fully reinstalled and FAI lists the install time as two minutes (the rest was rebooting). "

Actually you could probably take any average Windows Admin and switch him to Xandros Server [xandros.com] quite easily. I just started using the trial (after becoming hooked on the rock solid Business Pro) and man is this thing easy to run! I just love the xMC, it is just too easy to manage.

I know some hate Xandros for the Microsoft deal (which I believe that, unlike Novell, they actually paid Microsoft for access to the documents for the API's they wanted to ensure compatibility with) but they really do make a rock

Besides, as someone that has administrated web servers of all sizes and platforms for many years, Windows sucks. It's harder to use after the first hour and stays harder to use, you have more issues, it costs more and has a lot more hidden fees (it's not just $400), and in general is just a pain in the ass. It especially is a pain if you want to go beyond static pages on a single web server.Linux admins aren't expensive. I can pretty easily find someone that's reasonably experienced and willing to work for

Wrong Linux requires more because Linux has more tweaks and settings on how admins want it. What Linux has over Windows is the ability to fit into the environment more easily. Yet to make that fit takes more time.

>Windows has as much or more updating and upgrading hurdles as Linux.

Wrong Windows is easier updated. You don't know what you are getting, but it is easy to update. Linux again has the ability to tune and tweak the updates.

For your point on Linux administrators costing more - That remains debatable as within the region I live, they cost the same as Windows administrators.

Wrong Linux requires more because Linux has more tweaks and settings on how admins want it. What Linux has over Windows is the ability to fit into the environment more easily. Yet to make that fit takes more time.

I can setup a standard LAMP setup (which is what most people want) in fifteen minutes from scratch (including installing the OS). To do a ASP.net, M

"Wrong Linux requires more because Linux has more tweaks and settings on how admins want it."Only if they were required for basic function would that be considered "more administration". In fact, usually this means less administration because you can set up Linux in a way that suits your environment faster than Windows, which rarely-if-at-all will be able to do so. If you're willing to live with the Windows feature subset, then you definitely don't have any more administration to do. But in that case you

Just FYI, Windows 2003 for Small Business Server was available in 2003, which would've reduced your cost figures immensively (around 1400US$ starting price (premium) including 5 clients, plus 700US$ for each additional 5 clients).

SBS Premium includes SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition, Exchange Server 2003, and runs on a single machine. SBS CALs are also valid for other Windows Server 2003 servers in your network, e.G. if you would've bought a Web Edition machine, you wouldn't need to purchase any CALs and run it either against a local SQL Server Express instance or against the Workgroup Edition on the SBS Server.

Back in 2004, Office Communication Server 2007 wasn't released, but right now it's a full blown voip solution from Microsoft (which works pretty well, and integrates nicely). It isn't expensive either, at around 1000US$ per Server, and around 20US$ per CAL.

I don't intend to change your mind, just wanted to show you that the stuff isn't as expensive as you're trying to make it. Also, if you're a development shop that sells application based on Microsoft Windows, you can apply to become an MS Partner, which costs around 1500 US$ per year, and gives you all the licenses you might want (for internal production use), plus an MSDN subscription.

With Windows you're more prone to more serious security problems. Of course there are vulnerabilities in Linux as well, but I've never seen something as wild as the chaos caused by ILOVEYOU and NIMDA in Linux.

Yes. And Windows ME sucked as well. A lot of the products that Microsoft was making in the late '90s and early 2000s were pretty bad. It's been over six years for NIMDA, and almost eight for ILOVEYOU. Let it go. If you're going to complain, complain about the latest version.
The other reason (se

My debian etch VPS takes up less than 12mb ram, and less 500mb HDD space. The hardware requirements for Server-2008 are astronomical by comparison. But, if you are running some huge commercial site, I don't suppose the hardware requirements are a big deal.

OS-X is very nice for the desktop, but I would stay away from it on the server side, not because there is all that much technically wrong with it, but because Apple don't seam to get the server market.

By hard earned experience with Apple server products I have learned that you can't trust them to support their products over long times. The all of a sudden discontinues products without any resonable migraton paths to the successr, if there even is a successor. E.g. they dicontiued A/UX and replaced with an Apple version of AIX that they then dropped totally in just a couple of years.

When they distribute updates they have more than once totally destroyed, customized settings, and the open source software that comes with the server version of MacOS-X is often incomplete or lacking in functionality compared to the same software on Linux or Solaris.

Chosing between Windows and Mac, I would choose Mac any day. MacOS-X is at least simple to use.

Have you used 10.4 and 10.5 server yet? I did both (just did an install of 10.5 server) and I would recommend it to anyone. It's built on top of BSD and uses Apache and MySQL. I know in the past they didn't really have a marketshare in the server world simply because a) they were not flexible enough b) they had proprietary solutions to common problems.The current 10.5 Server has much improved over 10.4. As in 10.4 you still had to use some command line to do advanced stuff, now a lot of that is moved into t

That would constitute a decrease *and* be less than the Microsoft offering. You clearly meant infinity*2.

Seriously, to what extent was Netcraft's status gamed by microsoft ala that situation where Microsoft got their platform as the return for ungodly numbers of parked domains vs. how much of reflects an actual legitimate uptake of their platform in the face of Apache? I haven't seen any technical/logistic reason for them to be suddenly gaining ground (maybe this move would have some impact), so I was wo

I haven't seen any technical/logistic reason for them to be suddenly gaining ground (maybe this move would have some impact), so I was wondering if it is really happening and if so why.

I guess it couldn't possibly be because IIS6 is freakin' fast and memory-efficient? It also couldn't have anything to do with the great.net application stack that corporations are adopting in droves. Or that Windows Server 2003 sets up balanced clustering with failover with very little brain activity needed on part of the ad

I run many IIS6 servers, in both production and development environments. It is definitely fast and memory efficient. I think you missed the memo to get off the IIS bashing train when 6 came out. It's actually a damn good web server, and more secure than Apache 2 to boot!

I have to wonder if it's because of increased security efforts by people using Apache to turn off ServerTokens so that the system no longer advertises what version of software is running in production?

Most of the servers that we run in production do not announce they run apache, but I don't know of any way of turning this off in IIS.

It's not like 2005 came around and suddenly people stopped using Apache. There must be an explanation for the massive decline in Netcraft's charts

Didn't you read the article! The primary focus is not "to increase market share" against MySQL and Apache as the Netcraft fud would have you believe. The real reason is this is a surreptitious physical-user based fix to sending out too many cancel allow dialogs. Microsoft completely misjudged the boxes functionality and popularity, which resulted in masses of dialog boxes being excessively consumed. Microsoft was getting so many bug reports about exhausted screen space from all the boxes that they had to something. This is just another case of MS providing relief to customers who are unable to responsibly control their MS lust, in this case for cancel allow dialogs.

Netcraft reports that Google has 7.39% of all active web servers in their survey. Does that really mean that 7.39% of all web servers on the web are run by Google? Thats as interesting to me as the Apache vs. MS numbers.

If you read netcrafts definition of a website you will find some sort of strange things. almost all the google sites are blogger sites, over half the IIS sites are myspace profiles and live.com blogs.

The recent decline in IIS and gain by apache is almost entirely myspace to facebook migration.

The other big factors are godaddy parking is IIS, most other parking domains are apache, and then there is the relatively small number of sites which are all the sites that generate all the content that you would actually want to connect to the internet for.

Netcraft is has a bit of a problem with figuring out what is a website. Is a myspace profile a website? No, but what if someone is running a music site off of their myspace profile and have it branded and put real effort into and is its own destination?

Do geocities accounts count as websites? most of them did get counted and when geocities popularity waned so did BSDs market share.

What if you wild card a domain name and have a script generate unique content for almost every possible hostname, and submitted tens of thousands of the hostnames of that server to netcraft? How many websites would that be? Some creative spamming by Microsoft or their enemies would make netcraft statistics pretty meaningless. Also Netcraft only reports on the front facing server which grossly understates zope and tomcats presence.

And that's before we consider factors like "what do these numbers mean anyway?".

Consider this: for a given large number of websites, running on a hosting provider, then the total number of Windows servers required to host those sites is considerably larger than the total number of Linux-based servers required to host those same sites (all running on identical hardware), because Linux is simply more hardware-efficient. So we would naturally e

This is Slashdot. The bar for Windows success is vastly higher than the bar for Linux success, whether it deserves to be or not. Don't like the statistics? Change the definition of the statistics so that they are painted in the light you prefer. After all, that's what Microsoft would do, right?

You seem to dislike their definition of a website. But what the survey is really telling you is which web server is being used to serve unique content on the web. Whether one server serves a million pages or a

But what the survey is really telling you is which web server is being used to serve unique content on the web. Whether one server serves a million pages or a million servers serve one page apiece is irrelevant.

Technically correct, but I think it could benefit from further clarification.

Netcraft's numbers tell you which piece of software is being used to provide web service on a unique hostname.

That methodology is from July 2000. If you have been following the survey for the last several years you would know that a large percentage of the sites currently counted are on blogger.com, livejournal.com myspace.com and facebook.com. They have been collecting comments and tweaking there survey for over seven years since that methodology was posted.

What I would find much more interesting is a sharepoint, drupal, joomla, plone, handcoded html, frontpage, ora

Seems strange they'd actually bother to sell separate "Hyper-V" and "non Hyper-V" products, given how little they intend to charge for it and that they intend to sell it separately anyway.

Microsoft, however, also plans to sell Hyper-V directly to corporate users who could wipe a server clean and install Hyper-V Server, which is priced at $28 and allows an unlimited number of virtual machines on a single box.

Actually, there are 4 (consumer) editions of XP: Home, Pro, MCE, Tablet.That means there will be either 8 or 9 editions of Windows 7, depending on weather it is a geometric or arithmetic progression.

If we attempt to count Windows 2000 (1 desktop, 3 server editions, according to Wikipedia), then we get 1, 4, 6 for desktop versions and a resulting polynomial formula of 0.5(x^2)+4.5x-3 (where x is 1 for 2000, 2 for XP and 3 for Vista) meaning Windows 7 will have (if we take x as 4) 23 editions.If we instead use x=version no. (5 for 2000, 5.1 for XP and 6 for Vista) then we get the formula -27.778(x^2)+310.56x-857.33 then Windows 7 would have -44.532 editions.

For servers, 1, 2, 3 numbering gives a formula of -2.5(x^2)+12.5x-7 with Sever 7 having 3 editions. With version numbering (and assuming that Server 2008 releases with a 6.0 version number), we get -25(x^2)+280x-772 and Server 7 having -37 editions (assuming it has 7.0 version number).

However, it is best to disregard formulas with negative x^2 coefficients, since they will all eventually result in negative values, therefore 23 versions of Windows 7 seems the most reasonable answer here, unless we take negative edition counts as complete Microsoft failure (CMF).

The previous limit was 50 users. Microsoft's partners expect the changes to go a long way toward making Windows Web Server 2008 more competitive with the LAMP stack, against which Microsoft has been making headway in recent months. Emphasis mine.

One aspect to modern computing that was largely unforeseen by Microsoft is the server farm. Well, Microsoft was completely blindsided by the Internet in general, but a command-line OS was something that Microsoft had, threw away, and then denied ever existed.

Suppose Gates had had a little more vision, realized that the CLI still had a place in the world, and thrown a billion or two into DOS development? Suppose Microsoft had turned DOS into a real contender for the server room, maybe tacking a CLI and some utilities on top of the NT Kernel? They could have called it MS-DOS/NT. Sure, it wouldn't be DOS as we all knew and loved it (hah) but then they wouldn't have been caught flat-footed when people started assembling hundreds and thousands of computers into racks and connecting them to the Internet.

The problem is that DOS was never designed for multitasking, not to mention the rather crap memory management. That's why you needed interrupt driven software (some of which is still with us) and anything that was "multi" tasking needed TSR (Terminate & Stay Resident) code to work, making networking a *bastard* to get stable.The closest DOS came to multitasking was with Desqview and DoubleDOS, both suffering from the "640k is enough for anyone" limits.

Well, its a catch-22 situation.If i use MS Server to face the internet, then i risk getting hacked almost on a daily basis from some script kiddie...if i don't use it, i need to pay Microsoft huge licensing fees and since i can't afford to pay the extortion, i risk being reported to BSA...

On a totally-different topic, anyone using Microsoft server for their internet-facing tasks without adequate (PhD equipped) hardening, DOES deserve the hacking they get....

Ok, but that's like suggesting Apache is insecure because of a vulnerability in php...if a website gets hacked because of a Apache module being exploited, is it Apache's fault? Of course not.That's my point. By that token IIS6 core is secure. Prove me wrong, mod me flamebait if you want, but it doesn't change the irrefutable fact IIS6 is secure. Unless you've got evidence to the contrary of course.

Christ, even Slashdot had an article mentioning IIS6 never having had any exploits for it. I'll find it if you

After reading the article and viewing the graphs(just look how many web servers are out there) it really 'hit home' how bad it would be if Microsoft dominated the 'server space'.

At present there are many different web servers in use today and it was something I took for granted. I am a heavy Internet user and when I am visiting web sites I never give a second thought about what server it is running on - everything *usually* works within my browser.

Do you know why?

These web servers follow *open standards* using standard protocols and published specifications.

Now imagine if Microsoft dominated the web server market. They will have a commanding share of the OS, web browser and server market. Once this is in place then you just know these 'standards' will drift away and eventually rely on *Microsoft* standards.

The seamless nature of browsing the internet will eventually disappear.

Eventually Microsoft's servers would be modified to serve content to 'Explorer' only - if you use a different browser you would get a 'blank' screen or message stating 'this site is best viewed in Internet Explorer'.

Internet Explorer would exhibit the same behavior, if it detected a non-Microsoft server again a message would appear instead of the web-site informing the user that the site is unavailable or incompatible.

Most large changes relate to registrars (e.g. GoDaddy) changing their infrastructure on servers serving pages for parked domains (as parked domains make up a rather alarming percentage of domain names).

So, what is wrong with the free-as-in-beer SQL 2005 Express Edition? It has all of the core features of SQL 2005. Nobody doing MS stuff has recommended Jet for almost ten years now. Even Access broke it's strong ties to Jet in 2000. For small systems, SQL Express is far better than MySQL and equal to Oracle.